HIGH profile folk acts are set to entertain fans in the South Lakes this month, as Spring schedules fill up with promising live events.

On April 13 musical scholars and multi-instrumentalist sister act The Rheingans Sisters will play at the Hothouse in Morecambe, showcasing music from their third album ‘Bright Field’ that came out last month on Rootbeat Records.

Since their award winning album Already Home (2015) the duo have cemented their reputation as an unmissable live act on the folk and world music stage.

As full-hearted and graceful performers, arrangers and on-stage improvisors, theirs is a rich artistic approach to the deconstruction and reimagining of traditional music via the adventurous use of fiddles, voices, banjo, bansitar, tambourin à cordes, poetry and percussion.

Their poignant compositions have also gained them many new fans and a busy night at the 2016 BBC Radio 2 Folk Awards, where they won the prestigious ‘Best Original Track’ award for their song ‘Mackerel’ alongside a nomination in the ‘Horizon’ category for Best New Act.

Produced by the sisters themselves, Bright Field was recorded and mixed in Abergavenny by Dylan Fowler, also responsible for their critically acclaimed 2015 album ‘Already Home’ as well as other recent records from the more innovative end of the British folk scene, such as Lady Maisery’s ‘Cycle’, Gwyneth Glyn’s ‘Tro’ and Hannah James’ ‘Jigdoll’.

Later in the month Feast of Fiddles will undertake its 25th annual spring tour, stopping by at the Brewery Arts Centre in Kendal on April 20.

Typically, fiddlers Peter Knight (Gigspanner, Steeleye Span), Chris Leslie (Fairport Convention), Brian McNeill (Battlefield Band), Ian Cutler (Bully Wee), Tom Leary (Lindisfarne) and Garry Blakeley (Band of Two) add the large range of fiddle playing styles to the rock back-line of guitars, keyboards, sax and accordion – all held together by legendary drummer Dave Mattacks.

In 2017 the group’s sixth album entitled ‘Sleight of Elbow’ was released, and it is these songs that the latest tour will celebrate.

The new album is something of a departure for the band as it features a lot of original compositions from within the band and only a single traditional tune.

One well established feature of the band is well exposed however and that is Feast of Fiddles arrangements of tunes from other genres, film or TV.

Tickets for both gigs are available form the venue websites.